COMM 380: Media Criticism
The Beginning of the New Beginning for Rock?
by Jonathan P. Santiago, '16
Major: English
Courtney Barnett and the New Hope for Rock n’ Roll
If only Courtney Barnett had existed in the early 90’s of Grunge and with it the end of an era as rock acting as a unifying force of popular culture? A star would have been born before rock became irrelevant except to indie hipsters and Pitchfork magazine. Barnett would have been a goddess among gods; a female Aussie Kurt Cobain with less esoteric and more socially conscious lyrics laced with wit but similar crunchy guitar licks. Instead Barnett will gain instant indie cred and if lucky maybe one mainstream hit e.g. The Black Keys, two dudes from Akron singing blues rock on the indie circuit for ten years to overnight mainstream success. Barnett, due to our fractured pop culture will likely reside along Sleater Kinney and Jenny Lewis as two bands/artists who reached indie goddess status this century but never broke through to the mainstream (it reminds one of George Carlin pithy axioms. “Why do they call it the mainstream?”…”because streams are so shallow”) but remain seminal artists who if borne in an earlier era would’ve been, well, rock stars.
But even though the rock star might be dead the likes of Courtney Barnett are producing music infused with energy and wit rarely scene in the modern rock scene and with cautious optimism might be the vanguard of a burgeoning era of rock icons. But is the music good? Simply, Courtney Barnett’s debut album "Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit" (2015) is a masterpiece; A perfect combo of Sheryl Crow’s voice laced with alcohol, cigarettes, and vegemite, Nirvana-esque guitar rock, and Barnett’s lyrics, filled with both a humorous and ambiguous, almost mocking tone, is a wonder of modern, straight ahead rock’ n’ roll. Not since Queens of the Stone Age’s “Rated R”, The White Stripes first three albums, or The Strokes debut album “Is This It” has an artist or band so consistently put forth the pure ecstatic joys of rock n’ roll. However, what sets Barnett, 27, apart from said artist and peers are her lyrics; worthy of Elvis Costello at his most biting and humorous and the shaggy melancholy of Wilco’s front man, Jeff Tweedy. In 11 songs Barnett leads us through stories of Aussie suburban ennui, the existential crisis of Oliver Paul, and the universal and everyday doubts we carry about ourselves and our opinions of the world at large.
But a depressing album this is not. Barnett imbues every song as in “Small Poppies, a slow burn of a song with Barnett’s grinding guitar weaving through her forlorn and monotone voice, “Oh! The humanity I wanna disappear into obscurity/ But I'm sure it's a bore being you.” The push and pull of harsh self-criticism and acid-tongue rebukes to people inside her songs is a joy to chew over while listening to her distinctive Sydney accented voice. One can’t help but think her Aussiness, if there is such a word, is a major influence on her wary-eyed world view yet guarded optimism.
Released in March 2015 by Barnett and her own independent label Milk! Records. Her and girlfriend Jen Cloher, a singer/songwriter, created the label in 2012 for Barnett’s debut EP. She has released it to the U.S through Mom and Pop Records; an independent label that lines its roster with indie rock luminaries such as the Cloud Nothings, Andrew Bird, and Neon Indian.
In a Rolling Stone interview in 2015 Barnett revealed as she walked through an art gallery in L.A as saw an artist’s “motley…assortment of chairs” that she, “…liked the idea of being surrounded by…all this beautiful and broken stuff.” Whether she befits the Aussie stereotype or not it’s clear, as in her taste in art, that the dichotomies of life are her inspiration for the tone of her lyrics and characters; whether it be a suicidal young man building “pyramids out of coke cans or as in “Aqua Profunda” unrequited love between two people swimming in a pool, “I tried my very best to impress you/ Held my breath longer than I normally do.” Barnett’s uncanny ability to infuse her lyrics, sometimes inside two lines, with a sweeping array of human emotions is the lifeblood of Barnett’s incisive songwriting: the contrasts of pessimism/pragmatism in “Kim’s Caravan,” a leisurely haunting burner embroidered with ringing bell guitars ( Barnett’s so called “ballads” in no way lessen her rock n’ roll chops instead they suggest a range of emotion in her music that even great artist’s or bands find lacking, i.e. The Strokes,) that Barnett wraps in her inimitable way, “We either think that we're invincible or that we are invisible/ When realistically we're somewhere in between/ we all think that we're nobody but everybody is somebody else's somebody.” Or how she shows the serious/mundane aren’t mutually exclusive on the album’s scorcher of an opener, the jaunty bop “Elevator Operator,” about a suicidal young man in Melbourne, where Barnett sings, “The elevator dings and they awkwardly step in/ their fingers touch on the rooftop button/ Don't jump little boy, don't jump off that roof.” Her songs reside in the real world where contradictions surround ourselves and others and that we often, as harried robots, don’t reflect upon and if we do it’s usually too late.
While her backing band, Bones Sloane on the bass and Dave Mudie on drums, isn’t up to the level of her lyrics, this isn’t Kris Noveselic and Dave Grohl leading the rhythm section, they provide a tight template for Barnett’s prodigious talents. Mudie’s wispy jazz like drums gives “Depreston,” Barnett’s poignant tale of the suburban success ethic, a melancholic yet bouncy tone that feeds off Barnett’s jangling guitar and menthol-infested singing. On the younger twin sister of a “Nevermind” song"Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go To The Party" Sloan’s bass provides thumping notes to the shredding lead guitar of Barnett’s and Dave Luscombe’s guitar fills.
Barnett, a huge fan of Nirvana, has the makings of a generational talent if she’s not one already, and if one song, her first single, encapsulates everything Barnett can throw down it’s the hilarious, acidic, screeching, feedback ridden, but ultimately melodic, like the best of Nirvana’s and their progenitor The Pixies who Cobain always referenced in Interviews among others, “Pedestrian at Best.” It begins with feedback and Mudie’s drums kick in and then crusty guitars begin and we are off and Barnett’s half-monotone stream of consciousness singing filled with Charlie Kaufman (think of Nicolas Cage in “Adaptation” or “Jim Carrey” in Eternal Sunsine…) like rapid fire insecurities and ambiguities, “I love you I hate you I'm on the fence it all depends whether I'm up I'm down I'm on the mend trendsetting.” After a minute of pure rock n’ roll heaven and breakneck vocals and pace Barnett unfurls her last verse, “I hate seeing you crying in the kitchen I don't know why it makes me like this when you're not even mine to consider/ erroneous harmonious I'm hardly sanctimonious dirty clothes I suppose we all outgrow ourselves/ I'm a fake I'm a phony I'm awake I'm alone I'm homely I'm a Scorpio” all along her voice rising in one might call anger if her voice which like her lyrics provides, two things at once, a countenance of righteousness yet not righteous enough as to not mock herself and her own imperfections. In short, a female Cobain. But in 5 or 10 or maybe 30 years some guy will be scratching his way to become the male Courtney Barnett.
Rock is in great hands if Barnett leads the way into the second decade of our century but can we hope for her to lead the way to a new rock age? The last epoch of great rock, the early 90’s, in which the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were mainstream and indie bands like Pavement, The Pixies, and a host of others were rock gods for the hipster set. The last fifteen years has produced many indie rock gods but few artists that burst into popular culture, unless Nickelback is your idea of quality mainstream rock. The Black Keys and Kings of Leon who both have their qualities have been the select few to breakthrough. We can only hope Courtney Barnett fulfills her enormous talents and starts a new generation of rock n’ roll that hopefully, for me, will be akin to when I’m 50 something and telling future generations that my childhood and adolescence were brought to you by Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder.
References
http://milk.milkrecords.com.au/
http://www.momandpopmusic.com/
Wallen, D. (2014, August 14). Milk! Records: Deliberately Poor. Retrieved May 03, 2016, from http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617
Weiner, J. (2015, April 7). How Courtney Barnett's Thoughts Became 2015's Sharpest Debut. Retrieved May 03, 2016, from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/how-courtney-barnetts-thoughts-became-2015s-sharpest-debut-20150401?page=3